Poetic Gibberish

Fork In The Road - August 22, 2011

2011-08-23T11:32:00.000-04:00

Fork In The Road

2011 - Mixed media on canvas

www.ErikVP.com

Here is a first draft of the story.

There is a fine line between genius and insanity. In the case of three intelligent but misunderstood penguins, their diagnosis was the later. Sentenced to life in a maximum security mental institution, the penguins spend their days locked in a room with blackboard covered walls. Their daily meals are earned by solving complex mathematical equations for the government.

Going crazy from boredom, the penguins construct an ingenious escape plan. The three escape with ease, and take their friend fish, and three large forks to ward off any guards. They roam the city in celebration, forks swinging in the air, and screaming out nonsensical poetry. Numerous attempts are made to capture the penguins, and their repeated escapes gain worldwide media attention and a fan club. The embarrassed authorities now claim the penguins never existed, and accuse the media of creating the hoax.

Just outside the city lies an old abandoned zoo. The animal cages and walls destroyed long ago, and all that remains is an iconic metal entrance gate and the word "ZOO". Inside the zoo lives a group of eccentric animals and their fearless leader known as the zookeeper. During an expedition thought the Amazon, zookeeper battled a giant Venus fly trap and narrowly escaped with his life, minus a left arm.

Zookeeper and his tribe of animals spend their time inventing technological gadgets, contacting extra terrestrials, and creating large scale art sculptures for public exhibition. Most of surrounding community consider the zoo an unofficial insane asylum and keep their distance.

One day the crazy penguins are spotted just outside the zoo. Two-headed giraffe wonders if they are dangerous with their forks swinging wildly. Zookeeper is intrigued by the penguins and wonders if he can persuade them to join the zoo. A perfect fit for our community, if I can just disarm them of those forks.

Zookeeper
(rides out on a unicorn to confront the penguins)
Greetings penguins.
Please surrender your weapons.

Penguins
(hysterical laughter, followed by all three yelling out poetic gibberish.)

We are three penguins with super powers

A collaboration between three

Fighting evil villains with forks

(more laughter)

He rides a mysterious pony

A one armed bandit and his mighty red shoe

Bad animals locked up in the zoo

If happiness is short, then we are happy!

(hysterical laughter)

Zookeeper
(Very annoyed by the penguins. Raises his giant magnet. Forks fly through the air, sticking to the magnet)
I too have super powers.

Penguins
(silent, in complete disbelief over the power of zookeeper's magnet)

Zookeeper
You have two options. I can return you to the nut house and collect a large reward, or you can join the zoo.

Penguins
(ponder for a moment, observing the large sculptures on the zoo property)
Do we get to make sculptures and contact UFO's?

Zookeeper
Absolutely, and you can entertain us with your poetry as well.

Zookeeper brings the penguins to a scrap pile inside the zoo and shows them a few sculptures for inspiration. The penguins immediately begin constructing, working non-stop through the night. Unicorn stands guard in case the penguins get any devious ideas.

The next morning, zookeeper goes to check on the penguins. All three are silent, and gazing up at their creation. Three giant forks, aligned in a row, prongs facing up towards the sky. Protruding from the ground, right at the crossroads where zookeeper and the penguins met. Zookeeper notices the sun rising directly above the sixth prong. The first day of June. Genius! Zookeeper smiles and walks away.

Beautiful Noise - July 12, 2011

2011-07-12T16:48:00.004-04:00

Beautiful Noise

2011 - 20"x24", Mixed media on canvas

www.ErikVP.com

Polar bear goes hunting for dinner and discovers a mysterious box, frozen in ice. Curious about the box, he brings it to his friend Alligator, a connoisseur of strange artifacts.

Polar Bear

(eager to share his new discovery with alligator)

Look what I found!

A mysterious box.

Alligator

(rides up on his three legged dinosaur)

It glitters like gold.

Where did you get it?

Polar Bear

(pauses for a moment, distracted by alligator's pet fish)

I was hunting for dinner and found this box frozen in ice.

There is strange writing on the sides.

Alligator

(Alligator takes a closer look.)

Heiroglyphics, just like the pyramids.

A gift from the sky people.

Polar Bear

It makes noise.

Listen ....

Alligator

(completely mesmorized by the noise)

It makes beautiful noise.

I must have it.

Polar Bear

I will trade one of your poems for the box.

Alligator
Yes indeed.

A poem it shall be.

Living in the literal sense
It's beautiful what people say
Simple things
More poetic than I thought

An occasional moment of coherence
I think subconsciously
Feel without feeling
Look without asking

Silent listening is good
The symphony of silence
An oasis of serenity

Sing a sad song.
Or maybe melancholic screaming.

Shhhhhhhh ......
Whisper softly

The beautiful sound of noise
Can you hear it?
Follow the pulse.
A natural rhythm of life, and death.

Polar Bear
(Polar bear hands the box to Alligator and gives him an enthusiastic applause.)
Bravo!

Alligator
(takes a bow)
Gracias senor oso.

(Alligator waves goodbye and rides off into the sunset)
Hi-yo silver!

The Village And The Beats (F-Train to 2nd Avenue)

2011-04-29T16:04:00.003-04:00

F-Train to 2nd Avenue

2007 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood

The Village And The Beats

You ask a lot about the idea.
What do you think of is?

A creative outbreak.

To look back and say,

That was.

You're saying it.

People will say,

It was.

Because at least,

It was.

Compared to now,

Which I notice now.

You cannot, not notice.

It is the fact,

That is was so.

It's not good.

And if it isn't,

You know, the culture is.

There are technical things,

Which basically comes to people.

Not worried about was,

When was would never go.

This is one of my early paintings created a few months after moving to New York. I did my first art exhibit in the East Village and lived there for a few weeks while searching for a place to live. The poem was created a year after the painting, and it occurred to me today that they go well together.

Departing Gradually Into Tomorrow - April 2011

2011-04-15T19:23:00.001-04:00

Departing Gradually Into Tomorrow

2011 - 8.5" x 11", Mixed media on watercolor paper

www.ErikVP.com

See the writings on the wall?
The delicacy of an adjective is intricate.

We tell ourselves repeated phrases.
Mental poems of traumatic experiences.
Absorbing pain through time.
Illusions fill the void.

Caught halfway through a dream.
The night is blue.
Painting bizarre landscapes.
Until the morning turns to orange.

A new intelligence brings clarity.
Sleeping feels good.

Today or tomorrow,
Beautiful is still beautiful.

Speaking In Tongues - April 10, 2011

2011-04-10T19:37:00.004-04:00

Speaking In Tongues

2011 - 20" x 24" x 1.5", Mixed media on canvas

www.ErikVP.com

Look over your shoulder
See the duck?
She found solace in the dark.
A place for clear thinking.

When I close my eye,
Resonant voices plot a tragic story.
Rivers of ecstasy.
Arresting passages of the mind.

Sit in am empty room with two people.
A live exhibition.
Jagged scenes of beauty.
Ungodly singing during a Chinese exorcism.
You feel discomfort.

Do they know?
They don't really know.
And therefore don't know much.
Get to know.
And listen.

There are people who understand,
And people who understand something.
Stick figure images are the best kind of art.
There are three steps to being funny.
You know the first.

What is the function of the dots?
Visual distortion works best on a vertical plane.
Shifting the scale towards large or small.
Irregular or asymmetrical.
If one anticipates fear,
A tree will fall.

The concept behind more is more.
Time becomes the past,
And it will be so.

Deviant monkey.
A master of unconventional storytelling.
Improvise a poem, or lyrics in a secret language.
Conducting deeply moving folk songs.
Dark arrangements about sex, sin, and war.

Look carefully.
Implications of misfortune lie below the imagery.
Burning a hole in the future.
Seek refuge under the umbrella.

No More Sunshine - March 2011

2011-03-29T16:33:00.002-04:00

No More Sunshine

2011 - 20" x 24" x 1.5", Mixed media on canvas

Consciousness is complicated.

You want to think about how.

Do you have to think about it?

Moral quandaries directly linked to evil.

Violence parallels loneliness in morbid times.

Relationships out of control.

The slippery stuff is most elusive.

Friend of a friend,

Or strangers looking for another kiss?

Beauty in a red satin robe.

Touched by love and passion.

Procedural voyeurism has a sinister undertone.

But what is perceived is not yet seen.

Several seconds passed.

A ghostly fragrance from the back door.

Where art thou?

I don't know, I said quietly.

Thinking, seeing.

High or low.

That line in the moonlight.

If you look away,

It glows.

Make a collage from left over DNA.

You can read stuff on the page.

Rhymes quoting exotic scripture,

Painted in red.

The words don't yet exist.

An overcast sky.

Feeling the fire and storm.

Golden tongues that echoe death.

Symmetrical compositions of silence.

Remember how it sounded?

Emotional propaganda of a saxophonist.

But what you hear is not blue.

I use the Brooklyn Rail newspaper as collage material in my paintings. I underline words and phrases within the newspaper collage and create poetry.

Quoting Nonsense With Exotic Tea leaves - Feb 12, 2011

2011-02-12T13:53:00.000-05:00

Quoting Nonsense With Exotic Tea leaves

Wake up from a dream.
Unable to speak.
Misfortunes on the downtown F-train.
Feeling the complexity of perception.

You said to imagine.
I would have liked to.
Imagine the sound.
A tuning fork under water.

Experimental poetry is essential.
Stop to follow the footsteps.

I hear laughing.
Is somebody on the phone?

Erased to expose history.
One minute, five minutes.
I sat there dazed, thinking deeply.
The study of wall paneling.

I felt a mild sadness.
Shed a tear.
Time to see a psychiatrist.

Sitting in a rocking chair,
Next to the elevator.
Organizing weirdness is nearly impossible.

Can I be excused now?

Tiny Factory of Best Kept Secrets - 1/20/2011

2011-01-20T09:22:00.001-05:00

Tiny Factory of Best Kept Secrets

2011 - 22" x 18.5"

Mixed media on canvas

Safety in numbers.
There is no such thing.
A city of eight or at least six.
Twice as many would be pointless.

This discovery occurred on Sunday.
Imagine a flock of dinosaurs,
A cemetery full of neon pink mushrooms,
And a titanium sunset riding the skyline for days.

Illegal jaywalkers can adjust traffic.
Cactus stick to people.

Here's what I suspect.
People raving about love,
Love to rave about people.
Purists love to hate.
Where can you get good taco in New York?

Not all the former are positive,
But I wouldn't mind coming back.
You have permission to turn the page.

Odd References From Latin - 12/21/2010

2010-12-07T13:13:00.003-05:00

Compose a small painting in red.
A witty brushstroke.
Painterly images of love and war.

Mathematical poetry is monotone.
Dark formulations of geometry suggest tension.
Is love eternal on the other side?

Laughter or thought.
A few seconds, or maybe two.
I decide not to spend any time.

Volumes of intertwined silence.
Grainy photos of early childhood.
Psychological portraits of minimal form.

Repetition makes the green lizard happy.

Look Both Ways Before Giving

2010-11-16T20:36:00.010-05:00

Look Both Ways Before Giving

2010 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.

Paintings and drawings in black and white expressionism.
Intimate objects of beauty.
Symbols of desire.
Personal aesthetic barriers.
A bowl of fruit, suspended from a string.
Reinvention of the still life?

Diminishing words with impossible meaning.
Swim within the depths of intelligence and nonsense.

Confusing truth with illusion.
Emotional truth within a poem.

Cynicism, apathy, a sense of failure.
Excess stimuli without a social message.
Look both ways before giving.

Chasing Death, North of Life - November 14, 2010

2010-11-14T20:26:00.001-05:00

Chasing Death, North Of Life

True or fiction?

It's a good book.

Why do I never see you write?

A weird tiger, cow or goat?

Technically, it's a bull.

Alluring diamonds describe a river of a darker complexion.

It feels too deep.

Estranged fish with legs.

Superior to God.

I can't believe.

So call me a non-believer.

Bathing in thunder.

This nightmare returned.

Mysterious streets in a brown blur.

A loose leaf binder filled with codes.

Think in terms of tradition.

At present, there are no suspects.

Something Indigenous Just Evaporated - October 8, 2010

2010-09-29T19:47:00.006-04:00

Blueprint a microcosm and manufacture it overseas.

What about the tidal wave?

It arrived out of nowhere.

Physical prominence left empty.

Artists within a bubble.

Making solo shows of themselves.

What about the quest for authenticity?

Start to say trans-generational.

With somebody watching.

Voices map out my inner monologue.

My formula is formulaically contradicting.

Say things out loud.

I think this person.

And I think that person.

Is that someone I know?

There's no place for yes.

There's no place for no.

Invisible In Ordinary Ways - September 4, 2010

2010-09-04T09:40:00.004-04:00

Invisible

2010 - 11" x 12"

Mixed media on wood

Private Collection - New Mexico

Invisible In Ordinary Ways

Close the door.

I have a notebook full of advice.

This is not a message of happiness, or reassurance, or truth, or warning.

Five percent of twenty four percent will be vivid statements.

This one and this one.

First, we must deal with one.

Longing for meaning.

But cannot fill the emptiness.

Exactly three years ago.

On the Fourth of July.

Some romantic dream.

My dreams about the past became increasingly narrow.

Ten days ago, for the fifth time.

I began to ask.

Is human identity discovered or defined?

Listen to the voices.

We will not follow preachers.

Clover Hearts - August 14, 2010

2010-08-14T13:29:00.000-04:00

Clover Hearts

2010 - 24" x 24" x 1.75" Mixed media on wood

I use the Brooklyn Rail newspaper as collage material within my artwork. Words and phrases within the text are underlined to create poetry. Here is the poem from this painting.

Flamenco Dancer On The Green Piano

These things were going on from time to time.

The problem with time.

By it's nature, willl end up

Smaller and smaller.

Whatever had changed wasn't changing.

Artificial angst no longer rang true.

Expressive faces trying to figure out a clear answer.

Leave it alone.

Figure things out a little later.

The story of a chain smoking turkey.

A fantastic fable?

Perhaps.

Intangible dreams

Abnormal behaviors

A Russian ballet.

Mystical bluebird

On a transcendental journey.

Space has it's own rhythm.

Apples and daisies

Suggest a delicate sensibility.

Thinkers in a dozen disciplines

Writing unintentionally, but not quickly.

The fact is turned on it's head.

A new thought eventually turns horrific

Breathe a deep understanding.

Would you say juxtaposing is the same thing?

A child can play dead and do it without thinking.

Abstraction in the contrary phase.

When we are nervous, we see landscapes.

An unassuming demeanor is the stuff of life

How are you going to move?

Flies wearing wings

Seen buzzing around.

The absence of music becomes magnified.

Portraits of life are profoundly touching.

A ghost held my hand and apologized.

I nearly cried.

Disturbed in a way

Conflicting people trapped inside.

Take your shoes off

Watch the tragedy unfold.

Raw canvas is soft.

Painting an oasis for me.

Small things manipulate scale.

Just figure it out.

Plants Cannot Remember My Name - June 19, 2010

2010-06-19T07:20:00.000-04:00

Plants Cannot Remember My Name

Finish two sentences.

Hesitate before the wait.

See the two rabbit ears?

What rabbit?

There were two,

And clearly there were not.

I wrote about it, if I were writing.

If I were writing, I could be writing.

To him, it might seem like writing.

I could learn.

Paying attention to it.

If I paid attention.

Learn Shakespeare.

Read poems or a sonnet about the ugly.

Text is sometimes ironic.

It made little beeps.

The one with burned wires.

What was wrong with the wiring?

Stuck between on and off.

People observing people.

I am observing them,

On my computer.

This Sunday, last Sunday.

They often come on Sundays.

The Jehovah's Witnesses,

Are looking for a good listener.

I will make decisions for them.

Given information they already had.

He did feel insulted.

How unusual it is.

She liked to collect jokes.

But it's possible, she did not understand.

There are photographs of painted fish.

This is not to forget.

Gone fishing with friends.

It might be a good memory.

Lotus Sunrise in B-Flat Major - May 31, 2010

2010-05-15T21:17:00.009-04:00

Lotus Sunrise in B-Flat Major

2010 - 24" x 24", Mixed media on wood

It's dawn, and the animals gather together for their morning trek. Giant green walking fish and snowy egret lead the way, following the scent of the lotus flower. Alien is the conductor, with the sounds of nature as his orchestra. He recites a poem.

Sonic Parallels of the Zen

Your name is Clive.

Retain a numerical sequence of the raven hair.

To explain one, habitually between ones.

The first includes a second.

Nine, ten, eleven, and then one.

Instinctually write for a few years.

Avoid the long answer.
Question, then ask.

Point to the misunderstood.
Describe a joke.

You mean diversion?

An articulate and extensive philosophy.

Cited as a composer of composing, an anti-composition.

Decidedly avante-garde.
Infamous perplexing works, Dada style.

Turn to the melodies in the ceiling fan.
Playing a note of the wind.
Imbuing enthusiasm of a true silence.
Pages of a blank score and not a single note.
Listen to it.

The tribe reaches the pink mountains of the forgotten world. A lotus flower rises from water, releasing the sun into the sky.

Background: I take the Brooklyn Rail newspaper and underline words and phases in the articles that catch my attention. Then circle a word or phrase for the title. It's more of a subtractive process, taking a page of words and editing down to a poem, or maybe several. It's kind of backwards from the traditional process of adding words to a blank page, but it works for me. The pieces of newspaper with poems get used as collage material in my artwork.

The concept of taking something that already exists and turning it into something new was inspired by a Richard Prince exhibition at the Guggenheim - 2008. His re-photography, nurse paintings, and deKooning woman, collage paintings were my favorites.

Manipulation Through The Enormity of Constant Repetition - May 4, 2010

2010-05-04T21:40:00.007-04:00

Manipulation Through The Enormity of Constant Repetition

Is large scale several hundred?

Tiny, to be sure.

Go away, but still say,

"Whatever is perfect, I don't need anymore."

We all would like to think,

This myth of the real,

It is almost entirely a myth now.

These interesting little ironies.

Do you think this now?

This idea of the past.

Yeah, I think.

You know, it is overwhelming.

I cannot imagine.

Interrogated by idiots.

And this woman, well not exactly.

She was sympathetic to me.

I don't really understand.

The idea that everyone might have imagined.

I found it rather touching.

You can start from zero and one.

Otherwise you end up with something sentimental,

Or something just your own.

That something I had for many, many years.

I can read a couple of languages.

So I have some access to it.

I had no real access.

I just didn't know much about it.

So you stick with the idea.

Some short.

Some shorter.

It would have been foolish to try.

Did any of your views about people change?

For one thing, I had no significant knowledge about water.

Filled with technical detail,

In great detail.

Water is power,

Which powers, the water.

If you don't understand,

You're not going to understand,

Why this is here,

Why that is there.

What, why.

All this kind of stuff.

To think you know,

Should never have been.

Remember to speak how they speak.

The stars at night.

This desert in the suburbs of New York.

An enchanted sky,

That has really reduced air quality.

You don't see the stars anymore.

There is haze in the air.

Smoke and dust.

I don't remember eating.

You are eating something?

It.

This kind of metaphor between two.

Yes, I think it's true.

Alive is also death.

You draw upon sources,

Your own impressions.

Our ability to create metaphors,

Of the things we see.

Everything is infinite, sometimes.

What is the myth?

What should it be?

Well this does require you to think, for example.

Yes, this is so.

This poem was created from:

The Brooklyn Rail - March 2010 issue pg.8

In Conversation - "A Modest Imperialist", William T. Vollmann with Steven Ross

Fond Memories of the Misunderstood - 3/7/2010

2010-03-07T17:39:00.000-05:00

Fond Memories of the Misunderstood

Absurd thought from mental illness,

Create works steeped in high culture.

An open minded approach to technical innovation?

Somewhat disorganized, in lengthy segments,

Two events, both impressive.

The uninitiated begs the question.

A testament to relevance?

A slice of reality is so rarely seen.

She seems to say nature.

And so must we.

I don't know the narrator of fiction.

But he has very bad karma.

Disjointed nightmares propel each story.

A different reality from one to the next.

Voices, so vividly looking for love among the dead.

Language requires cosmetic amputation to be attractive.

Pigeon gibberish goes beyond personal.

Switch directions.

Paint abstractions on the back of a leaf.

Be in the natural trepidation.

The hands explain insecurities.

People buy things of guilt.

There are low tech hidden cameras.

Chronicles of loyalty squandered.

Recall basic math from books made of paper.

Begin with an application vulnerable to the argument "X".

Based on extensive studies,

The message requires an enormous amount of stuff.

Our anxieties usually predict fear.

Start right away.

A whale sings babies to sleep.

Birds let the viewer sort out the details of artistic fundamentals.

Despite the efforts, people kill people.

You linger, you lose.

Slow down to realize that last thing,

The thing so enjoyed,

Art without performance.

Another poem from emptiness?

Perhaps.

New Poetry for 2010

2010-01-01T21:59:00.000-05:00

What Appeared To Be Half, Is Yours But Also Ours

What is creating?

Search for something different.

Swirling around Paris.

Searching further, and experimenting with collage.

Blue-green amoebas,

With enlarged heads, and angry faces.

Circles of yellow.

A romantic narrative.

Give them names like Pierre.

A brilliantly psychedelic head.

Painted in acid, on cardboard.

People glued to ropes, mixed with sand on paper.

Hilarious lowbrow humor intended for New York.

Fascinating Anecdotes of A Forklift Operator

Visual states.

A blend of theories.

Forms of the conscious mind?

Composed poetry.

Strange and beautiful.

Moving casually between good.

Does anyone care about right angles and colored squares?

Listen to the unspoken.

A video with leaves and green murals.

It's a simple metaphor.

Strange paintings nearly forgotten.

Bizarre images of yellow trees.

A vibrating eyeball, surrounded by magnetic dots.

His teachings of the fourth dimension,

Sounded natural and organic.

A kind of beauty falling backwards.

The missed opportunity explained.

Let time slip away.

Rejecting a sign of genius.

Orange, with a flowering burst of deep orange.

Faint interruptions of orange.

Devoured by orange.

Aluminum sculptures of monumental size.

Handcrafted and painted translucent black.

They don't fit in a gallery.

Psychosis Dressed In A Tuxedo

Inquiry or criticism?

I want things to happen.

Recognizing limits as fixed.

Everyone is dumbfounded of reality or anything, for that matter.

Make sense of the past with absolute confusion.

Pretending average people still exist.

She seems uniquely talented with math.

Humans invent computers.

Computers make humans.

An unpredictable relationship.

The show begins.

For every conceivable cause, all of which is upstairs.

An unfortunate misreading that I don't seem to remember.

Position undermines the notion.

Is there a universe?

He doesn't realize.

Concern is not the concern, I think.

Inhibited action, but not to paralyze.

Take an eight hour lunch.

Applesauce is important.

Large Amounts of Natural Suspicion, Under the Raspberry Tree - November 12, 2009

2009-11-11T20:45:00.013-05:00

Make us feel critical of the mind.
Repeat the jargon next to the hypothetical elevator.

Divided between two in all directions.

Uniformity through six, a natural conclusion.

Looking to escape the crowd.

To see concentrically outward.

A boundary observed from space.

Perceived ringing pushed beyond the horizon.

This photograph disappeared from New York.
A small fruit farm, in black and white.

A new image developed.
Spreading slowly away from the dying leaves.
Run past the trees,
And live to see the second world.

A climatic zone breeding resilient plants.
With a dozen before ten,
A second experiment grew large and small.

Tinkering within hidden marshlands.
Deep purple and golden reds.
Enormous red fruit thrived in bushels.

A bottle of winter left for four years.
A cold tonic invented to cure.
Only raspberries grow in the swamp,
And tea leaves change the weather.

The system could be accessed.
An entry point behind the phenomenon.
They knew it and didn't know.

The Brooklyn Rail - November 2008 pg. 92

From "Under Every Spreading Tree" by Carl Peterson

"The Raspberry Prince"

"The New Suburbia"

"The Strategic Value of Holcombe High"

Familiar Sketches In Chronological Order - 10/18/2009

2009-10-18T19:01:00.008-04:00

Give us the world as it is.
Leave us with a story of everyday life.

Copy the original quote, or write another?
Mirrors cut from mirrors.
A single paragraph fragmented together.
Equally, you might say.

Word for word.
Line for line.
The versions were identical.
Mirrors never escape from the shadows of originality.

I wish for a bit more.
A mind of fire, living in tribal myths.
The raw power of a delirious moment.
Primal, exquisite.
Free from judgement, restriction, and reflection.

Background: I take the Brooklyn Rail newspaper and underline words and phases in the articles that catch my attention. Then circle a word or phrase for the title. It's more of a subtractive process, taking a page of words and editing down to a poem or maybe several. It's kind of backwards from the traditional process of adding words to a blank page, but it works for me. The pieces of newspaper with these random abstract poems get used as collage material in my artwork.

The concept of taking something that already exists and turning it into something new was inspired by a Richard Prince exhibition at the Guggenheim - 2008. His re-photography, nurse paintings, and deKooning woman, collage paintings were my favorites.

"Familiar Sketches In Chronological Order" was created from the following Brooklyn Rail Articles.
"The East, The West, and Sex: A History of Erotic Encounters" by Kaitlin Bell - July/August 2009, pg.21
"Reflections by Jonathan Blitzer" - July/August 2009, pg.21

Painted Words From The Eye of Another Era - 8/30/2009

2009-08-30T20:41:00.005-04:00

From black to white,
But also white to black.
Punctuated forms in ambiguity.
The idea of drawings,
Made of charcoal blacks from the imagined world.

It felt good to be outside.
A humble emancipation from imagination.

Follow the reflections of a world no longer real.
Completely empty for a time.
Listening to daily life at certain angles.

Momentary gestures disrupt convention.
Experimental sounds play an upside down keyboard.
An acoustic minimalist loudly became a distraction.
Atonal ecstasy improvised slowly.

Anxiety about everything expresses a yearning to preserve.
Day to day thoughts haunted by disorderly feelings.
Machines create them.
There is so much to tell.

With a string dangling a watch,
Thought may be cynical.
Pleasure exposes our personality.
Moving to a point in desperation.
It was death that led to departure.

A collage of images,
Printed on brown paper bags.
Replicated, and laid on a bed.
Nude women with a banana.
Printed images to synthesize sex.

A villainous white man,
Painted expressionistic cobras by a giant tree.
Step away from unobtrusive color.
Things in the world exude a quite shift in creativity.

One metaphor inside another, infinitely small.
Paint before us.
The secrets obscured in meaning.

Two are made of one.
One can be seen, but three transform.
Tradition forces the present.

I remember seeing eccentric objects.
Lonely, empty.
The sound of crickets.

Petals on a blossom predict love.
To be nothing remains the final act of reason.

Rituals of Probability In A World Without Desire

2009-07-19T22:39:00.003-04:00

The Important Things I Like Happen To Be Big
2009 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.
www.ErikVP.com

The poem titled "Rituals of Probability In A World Without Desire" lives within the newspaper collage of this painting.

Rituals of Probability In A World Without Desire
A yellow vortex of exploding bubbles.
The theme untitled.
Potential electricity is so often the case.

One outstretched arm.
I don't understand it.
Is nil French for zero, or nothing?

Every evening, in the morning.
Night after night,
Recalling someone red.

I know you from somewhere.
Look at my watch.
Is this you?
I imagined who I recognized.

Found with a few trees.
Cold water.
A metaphor, or fiction?

It's a composition in need of a story.
Prolific bunnies that never seem to connect.

Imagining a message on all sides.
It would have to be a message.
Incomprehensible, and therefor indispensable.

An original dream.
To be hypnotic, and express a desire.
Take me there, to find death.

The idea of abstract surrealism.
Emotion beyond the Freudian art.
Paint the potential to perceive.

Concealed in what was innocent.
Performing nude,
In beautiful, expensive, paste-on glitter.

Give to the gladiators everywhere.
There were seven.

Sense of Guilt Fantasies From the Early 60's Joined With Charisma

2009-07-04T20:38:00.005-04:00

Bizarrely beautiful,
Completely absurd,
And subtly off-kilter.
Glue explains the lack of conjunction,
With impermanence.

A fascination gone too far,
In this pure realism,
Whose primary mode is X and Q.

A dozen readers of nothing.
Can this book develop misunderstanding?
A consciousness incomplete.
The other, we had to innovate.

The rule of thought was fascinating, and birds sang.
This was original.
Mistakes delineate an uncertain entity.
Survive the stories we tell through telling.
Stories about perceptive cats,
An old woman who sits.
Reality is made of reality.

Echoes change in mood,
While becoming unstable.
The ever increasing complexity of history,
Mirrors the lifetime of three.
From a leader among the defeated.
The dream of revolution.

A picture raises two questions.
Prejudice or intellectual arrogance?

Here is a way.
A precautionary approach to nature.
If you practice nature.
The scientific argument changes.
Life with nature, arranged in sections.
I was delighted.

Redefined or difficult to prove,
The third mind glaring.

Laid to rest.
Mixed feelings now transformed.
Examination of reason while driving.
A double reward.

Translucent brush strokes.
My mind living elsewhere,
From thought to thought.
Tokyo, Paris, New York.
The sound of two hands between east and west.

Days, seconds, a staccato.
Because I am normal.
Ordinary life.
A reminder of the real.

An Emotional Composition Painted In A Neutral Color

2009-05-18T08:54:00.003-04:00

Digital is producing a kind of human capacity.
So many people are forecasting death.
But the physical medium is alive and well.
The concept of death created.
She chose to create.

Certain feelings consciously placed on the table,
Consciously use meaning.
If we think about everything else,
And everything through the beginning,
I often think about it equally.

I don't want to look.
You have that spot.
Say something important.
Then be the still life,
And go.

Try to draw composed patterns.
It's dumb, semantically,
But I like the idea of things.
They have meanings to other meanings.
To other people.

I had some used bricks.
Bricks come to mean ruin, in some way.
Who died?

Theatrical paintings are always unspokenly theatrical.
There is that element.
Left un-thought-about,
They show patterns,
With yellow paint.
I don't really have a pattern.

Can you talk about color?
I'm obviously thinking,
And I don't know what I mean by that.
I had color.

There was a discussion recorded.
Something about post-modernist instability.
I really wish people understood that.
Yes.
That would be something.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 4/15/09

2009-04-07T09:34:00.006-04:00

Absurdity In Three Pieces
It is somewhat unclear,
How well it resonated.
A set of twins,
With almost no trace of human figure.

Symbols of female fertility,
Around the wall.
A greater emphasis on circumstantial context.
Her ideas are related.
Each is practical or primary.

Individual context of history.
Open to interact.
The dot screen shift to yellow,
Could be read.

Language and meaning.
Delusion and fortune,
Available to the viewer.

Something relevant, disjointed, or arbitrary.
Fragmented about a moot point.
Both have symbols.
The meaning, multiple and distinct.

The seamless has rendered,
To the ongoing evolution.

Daydream about how.
I recalled.
Interrogated about culture.
I imagined.

Photographic imagery.
The viability of ambiguities become visible.

Horizontal Bands Between Solidarity and Evanescence
Make sense for a reason,
And grasp the tangible.

The male nude, stiffly drawn.
Never painted a nude.
He was a painter, self-taught.

The concept of boxed-in feelings.
The geometry of urban living,
Will fill those spaces.

A small gesture reveals sensibility,
And unusual viewpoints.

Occasionally, snail-like accumulations,
Of color next to color,
Form shadow and space.

Things seem to be rigorous.
Falling somewhere between,
Predictable and unexplained.

Repeat things familiar.
These arrangements yet absurd.
Fish don't have access to the obscure.

Energy, an oasis of warmth.
The glow of inspired optimism.
Not that everything will.

A field of yellow.
The chaos understood.
This curious blend of words.

A False Metaphor, Mapped From Linguistic Meaning
Purposeful experiments in urban psychotherapy.
To change negative thought patterns,
The therapy is uniquely focused.

Distressing social structures,
Between forces of nature.
One problem and one location.
Futuristic speculation dismissed as fantasies.

Piece together geraniums.
The swan song of January.

A can of soup?
There's a fly in my soup.
Be discerned by the kitchen utensils.
Complex symbols of meaning.

Find a way.
More elliptical.
We have passed a time,
For delirious visionaries.
Imagine that.

Exotic coconuts,
Have a ritual we recognize.
An unlikely pair who resonate.
One was sophisticated,
The other reclusive.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 4/1/09

2009-03-28T19:19:00.009-04:00

Background: I take the Brooklyn Rail newspaper and underline words and phases in the articles that catch my attention. Then circle a word or phrase for the title. It's more of a subtractive process, taking a page of words and editing down to a poem or maybe several. It's kind of backwards from the traditional process of adding words to a blank page, but it works for me. The pieces of newspaper with these random abstract poems get used as collage material in my artwork. I create the artwork. My darker, semi-schizophrenic alter ego creates the poetry.

The concept of taking something that already exists and turning it into something new was inspired by a Richard Prince's exhibition at the Guggenheim - 2008. His re-photography, nurse paintings, and deKooning woman, collage paintings were my favorites.

Examples: You can see actual articles from the Brooklyn Rail with the poetry on my website at www.ErikVP.com/poetry

A Boundary Between Perception Pieced Together
This is what we do.
Something or seeing something.
Looking up or looking down.
I empathize with that.

You make your own prints for intervention?
The color of strange colors.
Technical defects.
Unpredictability is always one thing.
Life and mirrors.

I was interested in invention, obsession,
The opposition to historical objects.
This guy looks at the same things,
But never interested,
And saw blue.
I thought, "oh my".

You know he gets more personalized.
Picture he's a flower.
Not so interesting.
He's not well.

Mud.
I also adore.
Interested in various kinds.
That's really obsolete!

What are your thoughts?
Who blurs the image?

We make hypotheses,
Reconstructing this process.
Visual illusions are extended,
As an image in a dream.

I don't think he loved Mussolini.
He just wanted to stay home.
Don't you think?

Watery Lily Pads Mocked By Instrumental Froggy
Be careful about the flower children.
An overdetermined idea.
Reading a sketch,
Then painting very clearly.

He was surprised by the fact.
Just spontaneous and totally classical.
I think it was overdetermined.

Maddeningly empty.
If apocalypse is revelation,
It's the end of understanding relevance.
Get ready.

The deluded old man,
Was genuinely touching.
His brilliance of manipulating.
The connection between sound and sounds,
Stripped of their color, words or images.

Can you talk about alchemy?
I was totally taken by it.
I wanted to find a way.

The musical landscape speaks.
I feel within your brain.
I deal with drama.

Over time, I am drawn to,
Part of my brain,
As well as color.
They're all people,
Who have life experience.

Virtually unnoticed.
Fashionably unconnected.
Fortunately, he had enough sense.
I can't think of one precisely.

Surreal, and beautifully rendered,
With highly physical experimentation.
A complex layer of conflict.
The message heard.
At times overlooked.
Stop fighting it.

A moment needs to be the next moment.
I can listen,
Lying broken.
It still sounds fantastic.

The Future May Not Be Completely Rosy
Cyan, magenta, yellow.
And make sounds called dance.
A cerebral piece?

Utterly original.
Contained within a labor of love.

Manufactured to the strictest standards.
Classical vinyl.

Nothing like a coherent narrative.
Political repression underneath surrealistic humor.
Serious words parsing at a literal level.
Funkier than a disco beat.

The mysterious German,
Strumming chords.

I discovered slippery truths,
About elusive recorders,
The word heresy.

Semi-acoustic, no-fi, lo-fi.
The secret studio.
Hundreds of beer and wine bottles,
Miraculously tidied up.

I'm not interested in composition.
I don't consciously use technique.

Ears decide who,
In terms of methodology.
People who choose to go,
And for some,
They do not experience a tangible artifact.
It's not personal.

For example,
Superimposed results compared to,
Meticulous restructurings,
That retain too much form and character.
Fascinating?
Frequently inspire,
And they will listen.

A man is like schizophrenia.
Legend says, he was listening on the radio.
This guy.
He was kind of a genius.
There is a kind of art called art brut.
I think you can call this music.

It's a song but also personal.
It's called rock 'n' roll.
But in fact rock 'n' roll.

Allow Meanings To Emerge
Their plans were delayed.
Irrevocably interrupted.
A non-stop mastermind from left field.

Wide geographic separation,
People still refer to "the impossible",
In 20th century structures.

An accessible art form.
Suburban worlds eventually go stale.
The niche creative projects had been found.

Compose life, and then go to the other side.
I like that quote.
Everything is equal.
I don't like hierarchy.
I don't like rules.
Arranging things that are equal, and so emotional.

The uncategorizable cow.
Tang, tang, tang.
Copy me?

I really wish people understood.
Move on to something else.
Reference a particular irony or nostalgia.
Probably nostalgia, as an illness.
People died of it.
Now think something sentimental.

Longing for home,
As an escape from war.
We were marching for the first time.
Into a world of really strange things.
I just woke.

I think paintings communicate.
There's the matter of one doing,
That nudges you.

You work, work, work.
It does something that you couldn't predict.
The baggage of convention entails serious slippage.
Whether faster or slower,
All I really care about is getting drunk.

Two inclinations may be diametric.
One aimed at creation.
The other about reality.
Objectively, the subjectively have a sense.
One might outweigh the striving of balance.
As you say, I like red and green.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 3/15/09

2009-03-03T20:54:00.011-05:00

Writing In Fragment Down The Page

Take a piece of paper.

And follow it.

What have you written?

Searching for an entry.

The sound of birds.

So much talking.

Stories are the collection of stories,

With a beginning, middle and end.
He awoke with a mind,
From the left side of right.

The two-headed god?

Ideas ask questions.

It's possible, but none the less.

That's not weird, it's just interesting.

An observer of his own life.

Leading to the climactic line.

It is finished, isn't it?
Yes.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 3/3/09

2009-02-16T22:45:00.013-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - 2/18/09

2009-02-12T22:18:00.008-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - 02/12/09

2009-01-26T21:16:00.010-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - 1/25/09

2009-01-18T15:55:00.012-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - 1/18/2009

2009-01-13T22:05:00.009-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - 1/11/09

2009-01-08T20:18:00.008-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - 1/4/09

2008-12-27T11:04:00.012-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition 12/21/08

2008-12-21T09:30:00.001-05:00

Walking In A Winter Wonderland

2008-12-19T16:37:00.003-05:00

There have been a few snow flurries over the past few weeks here in NYC, but today was the first real snowfall. A whole 3". WhoooHooo!!! It was barely cold enough to keep frozen, and by late afternoon, it was already turning slushy. But it was fun to walk around in it while it lasted.

Since I lived most of my life in California, the whole concept of seeing snow is still new and exciting to me. The best part of living in NYC is not having to deal with driving in it, or even shoveling it. I'm still hoping to experience a real blizzard one of these days. I am told it's a surreal experience being in the city with no traffic on the roads.

Here are a few photos from Prospect Park in Brooklyn. Yeah, we have real trees here. How about that.

I have seen little green aliens a number of times, but this is the first one I have seen making a snowman. The aliens with the pointy heads don't like being photographed. This one started throwing snowballs at me.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 12/17/08

2008-12-16T09:01:00.013-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition

2008-12-10T10:32:00.019-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - 12/10/08

2008-12-09T10:13:00.009-05:00

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition

2008-12-07T08:32:00.004-05:00

I take the Brooklyn Rail newspaper and underline words and phases in the articles that catch my attention. Then circle a word or phrase for the title. It's more of a subtractive process, taking a page of words and editing down to a poem or maybe several. It's kind of backwards from the traditional process of adding words to a blank page. But it works for me. The pieces of newspaper with these random abstract poems get used as collage material in my artwork. I create the artwork. My darker, semi-schizophrenic alter ego creates the poetry.

A Wise Passiveness
The right to be never noticed.
Virtually blind?
Who became blind?

I had a memory.
Memory less prodigious.

The science to integrate form and matter.
Losing control,
Under psychotropic control.

He witnessed clearly.
The objects,
They might be rare animals.
Exquisite, for their own sake.

He recognized that.

Get Some Arms and Legs
Their experiments unsuccessful.
The dead ones,
They burn up?
Yes, you have to burn them.
Ten or twenty.

People might complain.
You tie them to a pole,
Then freeze them?
The fridge is full.

The professor a professor.
A French professor.

Open the fridge.
Arms and legs piled high.
Close the fridge.

Need I even ask?
Silence prevailed.

Academically sanctioned,
Forever.
The professor,
He went his own way.

He Might See Marginally
The visionary one.
Under the influence.

Seeing something.
Deeply inter-fused.

It might have been Venus.
Or the opiated skull of wisdom.

I'm guessing it was prophecy,
Or I would see nothing at all.

Heavy Bee Mode
Half asleep,
On the telephone.
Discussing the deal.

Killer bees.
I need some.
I will pay.
You must be careful.

Six hours later,
Expired.
An inversion of psychics,
Not physics.

It is winter.
The bees move fast.

Variations of This
Improvise every visit,
Not yet constructed.
Fact is not a factor.

Once controversial,
Now weirdly comfortable.
Neither is French.

Gather the delicate.
Ears, a lavender rose.
Hair, a red heart.

A Geisha lit a cigarette.
Outside it was pouring,
Gold glittered rain.

Not Thinking of Anything In Particular
An idiot-savant.
Walking aimlessly,
Collecting impressions.
Meticulously collected,
Strictly to be admired.

With a keen eye,
Always for the non-useful.
He collected hundreds.

Walking delirious.
Medicated by hashish,
Contemplating whatever.

Strangers Together
Art without art.
It is an exercise,
Of others creating.

Read, look, photograph,
Organize, enact.
One must participate.

I turn to surrender.
Sinister thoughts entered my head.

People hovered.
I soon become oppressive.

Watching the act,
I couldn't contain curiosity.

What are we doing?
My mind connecting with strangers.
This is different.
I didn't mind.

I felt a strange attachment.
As thought we shared something unique.

Physically found.
Relevance and meaning.
A rare experience.

Unforgettably Alienated
I think about alienation.
Go off to Canada.
No one to understand.
Sometimes murky is always clear.

Screaming poetically.
So much emotion inside.

Dissonant elements,
Complement one another.

Red, black and white.
Red and black.
Captivating simultaneously.

Divine Punishment For God
The young and seductive Chinese executioner.
She communicated pain.
Seeking, not to take pleasure,
But to dehumanize.

Obscenely erotic,
Unconventional pleasure.

Tormented, dehumanized.
Perhaps excessive.
Impossibly joyous and reckless.

Then, she called him God.

Shackled of Addiction
Loving his enemy,
Depressed, beneath the tie.
Beneath the stiff exterior.

An enemy,
Infinitely wrathful.
A damp, moldy cigarette.

What Does The Thread Mean?
I dreamt my own work.
I made it afterwards.

Cannibalism.
A human being.
A moral entity?

An artist of the word.
Part of a strategy.
A provocative metaphor,
Of consumption.

Describe relationships,
Power and influence.
Connect psychoanalytic theories,
To counter culture.

Re-enact what one might ask.
A group of ten.
Six on the floor.
Form a tight circle.
Thread their mouths and eyes closed.

Dead While Alive
Anti-social feelings,
And discontent.

He saw unhappiness as,
Limited happiness.
A perception tragically estimated.

Found dead in the asylum.
The cause of death was technical.
An autopsy disclosed:
Foot holding shoe.
A lethal dose.

Counterfeit Lucidity
Your interest in my lack of interest.
The diagnosis fascinates you.

You suggest I attempt lucidity.
The verses present my diagnosis.

Poetry and the literary world,
Mean nothing to me.
Nothing which compels me.

The verses I know.
Suicidal because of humanistic concern.
To remain undead and dream.
But not to have been born.

It is in the verse,
Listen.

Exactly As It Stands
The offer you extend,
Printing and fictionalizing my name.

Why revise?
My unholy brain.
The poems imperfect,
Disordered lines.

I paint to paint.
Every brushstroke imperfect.
I refuse to normalize.

Couldn't Identify The Scent
Her name was God.
My name is God.
You like that,
I can see.

Lick there now.
Swallowed,
A gram of cocaine.

The compulsion to,
Every day.
Sinuses congested.

To Go Or Not To Gogh

2008-12-06T14:21:00.001-05:00

If you are contemplating whether or not to see the Van Gogh exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, my suggestion is to Gogh. Yes, the exhibition is timed entry due to very large crowds, but it's well worth the wait.

I went during the free Friday evening hours (4-8pm), when lines are the longest. The line to get into the museum extended from 53rd street all the way around the block onto 54th street. However, at 4:00pm the line moves steadily, and it took about 30 minutes. I was probably a quarter mile back in the line, so don't let the length of the line deter you from going. Along with your museum entrance ticket, you get a separate ticket for the Van Gogh exhibition with an entry time. Mine was 6:30pm, so figure 2 hours later from the time you enter the museum. You can see the rest of the museum and just show up at the exhibition entrance when it's your time to go in. I even arrived 15 minutes early and went straight in.

It's probably a once in a life time opportunity to see this collection of artwork. The exhibition is titled "The Colors of The Night", and is a compilation of paintings done during the evening hours. Some are day scene paintings, so he was doing them partly by memory rather than entirely en plein air.

"The Starry Night" might be his most famous painting, but the largest crowd was around "The Starry Night Over the Rhone". It's the highlight of the show.

"The Starry Night" - 1889

"The Starry Night Over The Rhone" - 1888

While you are waiting for Van Gogh, visit the Joan Miro - Painting and Anti-Painting exhibition on the top floor. It's a collection of experimental works from 1927 - 1937. The series includes paintings on unprimed canvas, paintings on cardboard, collage & sculpture, small paintings on masonite & copper, pastel works on paper, and many more.

Museum Info:
Museum of Modern Art - www.moma.org
Free Fridays: Every Friday from 4:00 - 8:00pm

Van Gogh Exhibition - Thru January 5, 2009
Joan Miro Exhibition - Thru January 12, 2009

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition

2008-11-30T07:47:00.003-05:00

I take the Brooklyn Rail newspaper and underline words and phases in the articles that catch my attention. Then circle a word or phrase for the title. It's more of a subtractive process, taking a page of words and editing down to a poem or maybe several. It's kind of backwards from the traditional process of adding words to a blank page. But it works for me. The pieces of newspaper with these random abstract poems get used as collage material in my artwork. I create the artwork. My semi-schizophrenic, alter ego creates the poetry.

The Pale Male Earlier Converted
There was no end.
The surrealist, a moralist.
Professed to detest.

Opium ingested,
Mistress thrashing in his bed.

Consumption, abuse,
A wish to die.
Reckless expenditure.

Just Contemplating
The infamous photo.
Mutilated, librarian corpse.
Stiff, bound wrists.

Blood on the moldy dungeon floor.
Rain in the distance.

Mad, enraged savage art.
Anything to say about it?

You Can Never Say That There's Only One
I get a lot of calls.
Strange people,
The government.
Who's watching?

He didn't say.
This is a common theme.

I'm on the radio.
I wrote a book?
Now that's very strange.

This man who they worshipped.
Deeply unpopular.
No one stands up.
It's doesn't make sense.

You hear people say,
There's no difference.
There is a difference.
That's not different.

One is perfect,
And one is the myth.

Images of one.
If one does something wrong.

The guilty is a myth.
A myth made necessary,
By the myth.
And you can't defy this.

The Book
I wrote it.
The whole thing.
It all came together.
The book.

I was conscious of what we were doing.
Near the street where I live.
Three or four people.
Questioned.

What you think, they feel.
I took out the book.

They started laughing,
And thought it was wonderful.
They loved it.
A great pleasure.

They accused me of soliciting the book.
It was absurd.
I was a pimp supposedly.
How ridiculous.

I considered it poetry.
Poetry not recognized.

Repeat The Cycle
Oversized, useless legs.
A pair of stockings.
Plenty of free time.
There was always something of interest.

A particular favorite.
Moby Dick's epilog.
Warm breezes, beaches, a beach chair.

A victim of infantile paralysis.
A tongue sandwich.
Lying in an iron lung.
The sun must have died.

A decade later,
His sense of smell became open.
The rain.
Not ordinary rain.

Civil Disorder
Sitting at a table.
The cat drinking plum juice.
Reminded of his last visit to Katmandu.

The only real excitement every morning.
The diabolical, raging battle,
Between street dogs and crows.
Over the possession of the garbage.
Listen to that.

Drinking Jean Paul
To understand Greek,
Call the Polish composer.
They called.

Yes, what have you got?
I have a painful procedure to do.
You will like it.

Buy red wine at outrageous prices.
If you say so.

Milky, alcoholic, rotten fruit.
Give me the whole bottle.

Let me ask you a question,
It is French?

Talent To Fish
Just put it aside.
To be paid and spend all your money on books?
You're crazy.

I'm describing a kind of ossification.
What's happening?
These are changes.
And it's affected me.

An addictive sociologist and heaven.
Find it interesting?

Disappear without a trace.
And spend a lot of money.

You can't do that,
Can't you?

We have to say,
This person is "X",
And take that kind of analysis seriously.

A Casual Sunday Conversation
Black and white footage.
A male figure with female parts.
How hazy the line forms.

Investigate declaration throughout.
Do not trust faith.
The words, a string of lies.

Rhyming words in personal narrative.
Scenes of orating language.

Language that intrigues.
That compels.
It sounds strange.
Like, "chop a duck head."

No, I Don't
Do you think books should be banned?
That puzzles me.

Is grammar not suitable?
A guy suckling on breasts.
Starving?
Absolutely, I'm sure.

I know it's being discussed.
What is considered normal.
I'd say,
No.

So, In Other Words
Thinking for a purpose.
I remember.

I became communist.
I was.

I thought it was impossible.
It was boring.
I couldn't accomplish one ideology.

I thought censorship.
But I didn't.

I belonged to nothing because,
I think I was,
I felt that,
I

The Village And The Beats
You ask a lot about the idea.
What do you think of is?

A creative outbreak.
To look back and say,
That was.
You're saying it.

People will say,
It was.
Because at least,
It was.

Compared to now,
Which I notice now.
You cannot, not notice.
It is the fact,
That is was so.

It's not good.
And if it isn't,
You know, the culture is.

There are technical things,
Which basically comes to people.
Not worried about was,
When was would never go.

It Seems I Think
Do you have confidence?
Did you ever think?

No, I mean, I thought.
But I don't think.

Got some papers.
The government told them,
That I didn't.
That I never thought.
I was shocked.

Of course, the thought.
I would have thought.

A Backward Step Puzzles Me
Life is the influential culture.
Autobiography books with obscenity laws.
A literary canon?

What is going on?
It seems to have gotten sharper.
I think it's sort of difficult.

What is going on, I remember.
A really bad situation,
The situation seems.

Dangerous, I don't know.
People saying the same thing.
The system
It can fall apart.

Moment of Change
The thought had never occurred.
A whole new idea.

They trust each other.
Talking just because.

A social interchange.
Kind of laid back.
Probably good.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 11/25/08

2008-11-25T15:59:00.001-05:00

Sketched In Cadmium Red
The suggestion of fishy humor,
Offbeat.

The burning of the painting,
An abstract human quality.
Nature's way?

Allow the text to transition.
Weigh with judgement, not chaos.

Examine paintings of clouds.
Then, look at the sky,
Without desire.

Induce ambition.
Paint the question.
Who deserves?

Textural Renderings
Unamplified noise whispers.
Two performers project waves.
Short visual poems and symbols.
The page can grow hair.

A tidal wave,
It's own nature.
Existing in certainty.
The symbol and waves constant.

Translations
Scientific instruments.
Nuclear fission.
Things you imagine.

A laboratory of paint.
Tonality and color.
Mesmerizing and strange.

Paint a material vision.
Transform into substance.

Combine image and text,
As a strange occult.

Combine images with found text.
He was keenly interested.

Experimental Poetry
A performance with sound.
Respond to one another.

Deliberate, but primal.
Oscillate between.

Calm yet attentive intrigue.
It was a s'eance,
Existing between words and sound.

Enthusiasm clinching guilt.
Experimental association.
The odd personality to become.

The performance ended.

Art As A Model
His work was art.
Painting.
Concluding.
Including.

His paintings imaginary.
Translations that define painting.

The imagination.
The real.
Be transformed.

A romantic who rejects rational progress.
Denying egocentric gesture.
Understanding the artist,
Becomes all which were derived.

Spiraling In And Out
The silent place.
A kind of green light.

Truth stretches.
Dialogue silent.
It makes me wonder.

A native language.
Non-verbal.
But not French.

Or Re-Invented
Re-invention of the other thing.
Something referred to as the number.

You know they didn't think.
They got rid of non-fiction.

Imprint the analog.
Free of random form.
Were all shut down?

Beautiful Is
Multiple personality.
The presence of good.

Conscientious methods,
Lack dissenting intentions,
They argue.

The very presence of glass.
How beautiful it is.

Writing invokes tension.
Beauty, the profound aesthetic.

The hallmark of beauty,
Brokenness.

Mind of Hell
Torture, disorder.
A troubling question.

Interrogations critical?
Interrogators will.

Mentally ill psychologists.
Dubious psychologists.
Interrogations.

Broken
It is and,
It can be broken.
A piece of glass.

Resonate throughout.
Anxiety and instinct,
Constitutes what?

Tragedy.
How beautiful it is.

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition

2008-11-23T14:55:00.002-05:00

World Based On Principles
You get one kind of object.
Think about what must be going on.
It all ties together.

A scientific project.
Sea urchins and advanced mathematics.
Hyperbolic geometry,
The easiest way to describe.

The inverse of a sphere.
Crinkled edges.
Take those shapes,
And imagine infinity.

In actuality, it is impossible.
Realize nature.
Nature's imperfections.
You are a mathematician.
You may discover.

The Purpose Of
Futuristic structures.
Designed to cure all.
Censorship of the media.
The fact remains.

Never mind the critics.
Be more vocal.
Question ethics,
The regime,
The government.

Aesthetic In A Nut
You can find beauty in things.
The connections drift.

Treasures recovered,
Or maybe jarred loose.

An organism admiring color.
Color otherwise white.

Disposable fish.
Popular in Japan.

New Genera Of The Thread
A textile zoologist.
Her exceptional discovery in a pile of weed.
A plastic bag, I've been searching for.

A skeleton made from fiber.
Further analysis will confirm.
Fragments of thread,
Hypothetical.

A wire,
She considers.
Investigation into evolution.

Shocking Sensibilities
A project that is planned.
It is evident that it isn't.

An endemic problem.
All over the world.

Regimes of grandeur.
But one reality,
A crisis.
I don't think anything.

Call Them Units
Make a colony.
Thousands of tiny units.
Similar to a beehive.

Call them cells.
Why not?

Grow art in the structures.
Very cellular, it seems.
Follow the progression.

Mass Hypnosis
Reinforce the cult.
Then, in February,
Back out and support Sudan.
Genocidal?

That won't work.
Months later,
Echo the same.

In The Simplest Definition
Decorative green wool.
Fluffy wool.
Superfluous kitsch.

Experimenting,
Far less than perfect.

Mathematical models of,
Barnacles, wool, and plastic.
We got the purely mathematical stage.

Methodically categorize thousands of items.
Photos of plastic.
Begin with one.
Build upon another.
Tying together hundreds.

Society For The Art
They don't understand culture.
Of culture banned.

Focus on surrealism,
And postmodern revolution.

Open an anonymous museum.
All the more obvious,
By people the revolution is sensitive to.

Access private, totalitarian regimes.
Fill in the gap.

Made For TV
The grave of a KGB ruler.
His death, odd.
Designed to highest international standards.

An integral role in protocol.
A dictator telling them what not to report.
There were few examples.

A moral quagmire and politics.
It is no coincidence.
Invented propaganda.
The cinematic masterpiece.

Art In Nature
Knitting bones.
It's perfect for complex shapes.
The ideal circumstances,
Minimum shapes.

A visual thesis.
Prove evolution.
It was aesthetically beautiful.

Art is science.
Who's to say they are separate?

An Unfinished Painting
To sense how much he was haunted,
I cannot learn.
I am certain.

Painting innocence.
A collage of junk.
The time tells us which.
Damaged or rejected?

Bring together images.
The paint, which he copied in paint,
Stopped painting.
Failure fills in.

Stimuli Was Twofold
Fatal jagged lines,
And infectious color.

Atmosphere dissolved.
Personally, we realize.

Painful alienation.
Theatrical associations feel real.

The strain of laughter,
Intense.

Vampires began to mark out the shadows.
Deeply influenced by life without tomorrow.

A Tricky Little Caper
Make it appear imminently plausible.
First look at development.

The new white wall.
The window was beautiful,
As beautiful was.

Who realized in the past,
Modern was still folk?
The idea had to resemble fact.
Though strictly speculative.

Not what could be,
But what has been done.

Pedagogy has always been odd.
Evangelism, it's different.

Observe what they show.
Don't put up evidence.

Draw beneath the gap.
The mission is challenging.

A New Race
A kind of revenge.
Emerging from the past.

These myths, we have lost.
Our efficacy of nature,
A stable sense of ourselves.

Rattus Maximus

2008-11-20T22:33:00.002-05:00

Rattus Maximus
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.
(Not For Sale)
www.ErikVP.com

This is the third and final painting from my Year of The Rat series. Rat and Moon and Year of The Rat were the first two.

I like watching the rats running around the subway tracks, and I always take the F-Train. The painting is dated 4706 for the Chinese New Year. There's some random poetry on the Brooklyn Rail newspaper collage below, but not related to the rat.

The title is in reference to the misconception that rats living in New York are super-sized.

I Know
There was a moment.
Out the window.

Now and again.
Turned around.
I was trying to find.
You musn't trouble yourself.

Disabled
The war on terror.
Couldn't do it's job.
Spending millions a day.
Our infrastructure crumbling.
Responsibility.

In The Pudding
You can have a vision.
A vision.
I see the proof.

The Neighborhood
If nothing else,
People should put themelves,
In a position to save themselves.

New Orleans,
A financial disadvantage.
Courtesy of the government.
Pushing and providing.

That Was Deep
This is how I think.
The greatest moral failure.
And that's how it will.

Thoughts Crossed
I am far from people.
I had foolishly imagined.

I looked at my watch.
I decided.

The next day,
At 11:10pm, in the morning,
The idea seemed ridiculous.

They Were Black
Twice in a row,
Across the blue sky.
So quickly they seemed.

A straight line,
In the late afternoon.

I waited a bit.
I opened the door.
I went out.
I shall always remember.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 11/20/08

2008-11-20T14:26:00.001-05:00

Dreams Of

2008-11-18T20:58:00.003-05:00

Dreams Of
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.
www.ErikVP.com

Dreams Of
Life is always ulgy,
On the other side.
Neither true nor real.

Sometimes when I look.
There's no wind.
What are they tilting toward?

Speak To Me of Death
The trees lived.
I am in the sun, living.

Gaze at my smile.
Whenever I smile.
It was the end of everything.

This started off as happy, bright-colored painting. I looked through the newspaper collage and created the two poems above. You can see parts of both poems in the photo below. "Dreams Of" is by the pink house. "Speak To Me of Death" is vertical across the top of the painting and wraps around the edge. The first phrase, "The trees lived." was partially painted over with the black M&M tree.

Both poems have a darker feel and I didn't think they fit the painting at all. I kept thinking about a dream I had many years ago where I died in my dream. I revised the painting, replacing much of the color with black and white, and also some detail behind the black giraffe. I really like how the poems ended up influencing the artwork. This is another example of what comes out of the experimentation process, and will get incorporated into future artwork.

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition

2008-11-16T10:15:00.001-05:00

More Sophisticated
Running through an impulse.
My impression composed.

A group of ravens explain,
"Keep expanding connections,
Moment to moment,
Communicate reflections."

"When you want proof,
Remember the musicians."
"Tonight is like that."

The Path That Encircles
The Hospital.
A smallpox hospital.
We would get in.

We tried out best to act like seagulls.
Posing.

We reached the fence.
There were spotlights.
The warning against trespassing.
We ignored the signs and jumped.

Life Aside From When
We thought it.
Have to change it.
So polite.

A heart condition.
One leg.

I think I belong.
More time.

The Back Door
I walked through it.
Could not have been.

A jungle of bamboo trees.
A miniature desert.
There is water.
A pond.

Outside
Those secret spaces.
You taking photos?

Transfixed by the images.
On the day, the sun rose.

That day.
Already belonging.

Expect To Find
It's moment to moment.
Comprehensive energy flowing.

Going over what?
Disorganization, leaving, changing.

This world.
I imagine romance.
There's sex.

On Her Back
She was on glycerine.
More and more.

She ended up dead.
Her faith in men.

She had devoted herself to danger,
Luxuries, never had.

This world to that.
To die.

They Look So Slender
Sand placed on a vibrating plate.
Open to chaotic feeling.
He relates.

A phenomena from his shoe.
Parabolas of darkness.

I speak obliquely.
I marvel at the peach tree,
With surrealist insight.

Prone to sudden chaos.
Their impulses circulating.

A Kind Of
People remember what?
What's unformed.

I'm trying to stabilize what.
The words are turbulent.

His thoughts dissolve.
Suffering becomes.

It's All About
I asked him how.
I learned what you will find.

A beautiful, shrunken box,
In camouglage,
Filled with weeds, trash, old tires,
And people.

He is unabashed.
He does no ask,
And he doesn't have to.

Stopping Often To Compose
People in the screen.
I arrange to meet.

10:00am
The mercury calling.

My apartment looked typical.
The same width.

"Two filters open."
"infinitely easier,"
He said in German.

Asylum
You
And that.
Of and.
The is.

To and.
It's of.
Of the.
There are.

The and.
To The.

Getting Up Early
The limbic nerve.
I become acute.

A man waving.
He works there?

This time,
There was a trial.

Beers From The Store
The recruiting officer wished me luck.
I was hand-washing paper towels.

The obligatory crazy guy.
I could see them looking at me.

An item in the paper.
People could get free meals.
Opportunities I discovered.

Previously Known As Blackwell
A small section.
A tall fence.
A paved road.
A second fence.

A smallpox hospital
A trip to explore.

She Was
An unrosy person.
Who's not going?
Ogling our new walnut.

Random, Abstract Poetry - 11/12/08

2008-11-12T17:10:00.000-05:00

Ice Fishing

2008-11-11T23:32:00.002-05:00

Ice Fishing
2008 - 11"x12', Mixed media on wood.
(Sold)
www.ErikVP.com

Polar bear and pengiun are ice fishing, but feeling dazed and confused by the changes going on around them. The glaciers are melting. The cold winters are no more. Strange new animals are moving into the neighborhood. A capybara from South America. A lizard in an igloo. Most disturbing of all is the dinner they are fishing for. What's this, a fish with legs? How they miss the good old days.

If you have been following my previous experimental artwork, you know I am playing around with abstract poetry. I use the Brooklyn Rail newspaper as collage. I underline words and phrases that catch my attention, and create a poem. The title is a circled word or phrase. I was reading through the random bits of text and found a poem that fit well with the artwork. The poem is to the right of the penguin. The poem is open to interpretation, especially since I didn't actually "write" it, but I've included my comments below if interested.

They Are Not Used?
The extent of the country,
Of land planted.
Radical anti-pollution factories.
Morning before long,
The horizon is black.

Most of the world is made of industrialized countries where land is covered by man-made things. Global warming is a fact, it's just a question of how much time we have left. Extreme measures will be necessary to prevent further damage. It may already be too late. The title, is in reference to the animals and nature scenes you see in the oil company ads and commercials.

Random, Abstract Poetry - The Sunday Edition

2008-11-09T10:03:00.000-05:00

Translated From French
I prefer English.
Is it English?

On a hot day,
I was strolling.
It was noon.
The sun was not.

The sky I could see it.
Without my head by my eyes.

The morning hours are whole.
Those evening thoughts have vanished.
The joys of the day never last.
I was happy.

They Have Surmised
Then, that is.
Out of the of.
Out my head.
This gaze weighing on.

Still, I continue.
As close as possible.
Come close.
Show us, and trust anyone.

The stranger still looking,
Spoke to the birds.
One of them to take my fingertip.

Forth From Nature
I listened to the singing.
This chirping, very slowly.

I was looking for an out,
In the center of the park.

All around me,
The sky was blue.

A few insects were hopping.
Intense life, the buzzing.

Well Dressed
He was telling himself this.
I had a small piece of bread.
Of crumbs.

Don't be angry.
Only observe.

He was wearing rubber boots.
With so much kindness.

Them Crumbs
It's a sign, commendable.
Like most, gracefulness.
I pulled the pie from my pocket.
A lie, I am sure.

None of Them
It's not that order.
I like, waterfalls, secret moments, open terraces, those birds, the garden.

Unfortunately, I appear very interested,
In what I was doing.

Stop thinking about watching me.
Some people are odd.

A poor man is sharing with the birds.
I've never seen this.

I matched My Step
We moved away, walking slowly.
He stopped and looked at the sky.
A great love of simple things.

Someone who doesn't think.
This is what makes a friendship.
The sign of great wisdom is not asking.

I know this.
I am wise.
I ask only to take.
But this is denied.

A Slice of
Who could hear every noise?
The garden was deserted.

We see someone going by.
The stranger, we didn't know.
Eating a piece of meat.
One always wonders.

Crumbs
To the birds:
I do it because I'm nothing.
I am fond of independence,
But not contentment.

The bread I brought.
Birds, a few yards away.

That woman.
I saw him.

I Was Jealous
People who eat outside,
Looked at him with pity.
It was great to see that.
In spite of everything,
There on earth.

For the others,
I was not jealous.
Those who desire nothing,
Don't notice someone eating.

Not even a look with the stranger.
He was truly poor.

We walk without saying.
It's so pleasant to walk.

One Evening
Lure him to an alley.
With a station wagon.
The cops put it together.
As a very L.A. crime.

Neither had a restaurant.
The other a big house.

Daily accounts of the eyes.
They had some horrible soup.

What would it be like to go to prison?
Listening to jazz records.

They had an opportunity.
And maybe, they had money.
We can't know.

Think So?
Not knowing exactly where.
Of being lost.
Most look at you.

Any more bread?
For not having any,
He should run out.
I wanted some,
So I could go on giving.

I am intelligent right?
I had enough for today.

Two Days Later
Son of a famous cowboy.
High above the flatlands.
The cowboy wasn't there.

There was a lot of talk about,
Mysteriously obtained income.
There had to be a way.
The Ruscha painting on the wall.

I wondered.
They're all so stoned.

And Yet These Were Not
I was likable.
I could speak to animals.
Without really thinking.
Something to do.
The birds had said.

Should have remained one.
What others hear so often.
I had wanted.

Smaller and smaller.
This stranger surely was.

Vacant Study
It was an ordered space.
A polished woodplank desk.
Open to a blank page.

A quill pen and the desk,
Among usual knick-knacks.
A pendulum, a crystal framed photo,
Weathered in Tibet.

Partially eclipsed.
An antique I surmised.
That was something.
Something that wouldn't.
Or so I guessed.

Anything better?
Someone grabbed by elbow.

His Servant Is Rare
A month to transform.
The only transformation is crime.
Fantasies, dreams.
You have to be brutal.

Outbreak of crime.
The servant-master is the servant.
A servant has no possibility.

And secondly, the money.
The crime.
Three or four.
Paranoid about crime.
The reality is killed.

You Know
I had just enough time to see.
At almost the same moment,
The birds wouldn't look.
They'll come back.

But I don't have any more bread.
I have to confess.
I don't have any more bread.

Malicious tone.
No one is perfect.

Fly Across the Sky

2008-11-08T08:45:00.000-05:00

Fly Across The Sky
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.
www.ErikVP.com

Have you ever seen a purple shark,
fly across the sky?
No, says turtle.
Sharks aren't purple.

Have you ever seen a purple shark,
fly across the sky?
No, says giraffe, don't make me laugh.
Sharks swim, they don't fly.

Have you ever seen a purple shark,
fly across the sky?
Yes, says snake.
Look below you and say hi.

There is a squirrel in a tree.
He's looking right at me.
Turtles can fly too,
look behind me and you will see.

Squirrel lives on an island.
Where it's always warm and nice.
His friends all come to visit.
To escape the cold and winter ice.

Three turtles flying high.
Way up in the autumn sky.
It's time to migrate south,
From New York to squirrel's house.

Sharks and turtles swim.
But some can also fly.
You never know what you may see,
when you look into the sky.

I completed this shortly after "Green Eyes and Spam" where I took Cat In The Hat, "Green Eggs and Ham", and modified it into my own story inspired by the artwork. This one is a similar idea, except that I wrote the story based on the artwork.

Random Abstract Poetry - 11/07/08

2008-11-07T13:44:00.000-05:00

Here is some more random abstract poetry to start off your Friday.

I take the Brooklyn Rail newspaper and underline words and phases in the articles that catch my attention. Then circle a word or phrase for the title. It's more of a subtractive process, taking a page of words and editing down to a poem or maybe several. It's kind of backwards from the traditional process of adding words to a blank page. But it works for me. The pieces of newspaper with these random abstract poems get used as collage material in my artwork.

How It Changes
Limitations, imperfections.
Talking in your sleep.
They're connected to each other.

Forgetful, I can't lose it.
So the idea became more.
I saw progress.
A bizarre thing to witness.

Being forgetful.
False memories will fade over time.
A different kind of reality.

Time
How one could not remember?
Random over time.
I would close my eyes.
Try to remember.
And try again and again.

Loss of memory.
This thing that grew.
Something you could see.
It was everything.

Part of it was moving through.
We didn't know how.
Fragments of her mind.
Trying to connect.

The only way was through.
Give us an idea.
Her past was all mixed up.

From the 60's
Two parts coming together.
Like a certain color.

I find an idea.
And think it emerges as something visual.

Described in detail.
How does the idea develop?

I was curious.
I found a book of the future.
Most of them were wrong.

I like weather reports.
I love following time.

Psychedelic or Islamic?
Looking at Twombly.
Cut out and manipulate.
My hand drumming in ink.

What I do now.
Making myself dizzy.

What about phrenology?
You've got to believe that it's real.
But most of my patterns are.

A Book on Nostradamus
Pseudo-science.
Studying bumps on people's heads.
I'm drawn to pseudo-science.

There is no tangible proof.
That thing.
Your use of pattern are patterns?
I look at a lot of things as invented.

The drums
On a pad with a metronome.
Making circular scribbles.
The movement was similar.
The metronome my drum.

It was a personal mark.
From that moment on.

Charting memory.
The works are extensions.
Alone, when no one is watching.

Strategy
You're setting up a duel.
That's happening in real life.
My drawings more personal.

I feel an itch.
I mark it.
Then transfer it to paper.
Like drawing a map.

You're interested in games?
Actually, I stopped playing.

Experiment
I don't understand.
I use specific bits of information.
Sometimes it's uncomfortable.
But I want to.

I feel like something I didn't completely make.
Shifting as you go.
I'll set up some way to push two things together.
And see what comes from that.

Change it.
Combine it.
And over time, I'll lose track.

What I had.
A lot of it is set up.

These Are The Things
Let's get out of here.
Out a side door.

I thought about the watch, presenting itself.
I had no moral qualms.
That was obvious.

A fear of getting caught.
Most people do.

Recurring nightmares.
Fueled by grotesque stories.
Mostly stories, I prefer to think.

I Like To Let Things Happen
Sensation into language.
Like something I couldn't process.
I need to get lost.
It's difficult to make sense.

Outright Deception
Come up with something more.
Removed, intricate.
A financial maneuver, perhaps.

The actual event.
Running over homeless people
The idea will never live.

Years entirely gone.
I move forward like a shark.

A story in the paper, about blood-red walls.
Wrought iron railing.
A 70's tv movie.
The landscape of Los Angeles.
Intrigued by something long.

A cartoon of talking tools.
A little off the formula.
The tools have something to hide.

Some Random Abstract Poetry - 11/06/08

2008-11-06T09:38:00.000-05:00

Some Random Abstract Poetry - 10/06/08
Category: Writing and Poetry

I take the Brooklyn Rail newspaper and underline words and phases in the articles that catch my attention. Then circle a word or phrase for the title. It's more of a subtractive process, taking a full page of words and editing down to a poem, rather than the tradition process of adding words to a blank page. The pieces of newspaper with these random abstract poems get used as collage material in my artwork.

Out of Control
You invent systems.
But then your systems, the drawings, get lost.
Drawings, charts, earthquakes and wars.
The absurdity.
A statistician of the absurd.

Literal connection.
Some sort of rhythm.
How much of your plan is predetermined?

I don't really plan.
One element, a shape maybe.
Sometimes I have , but it almost never goes.
I don't know.
The final work is small, recorded over time.

Non-Linguistic
Translate abstract thought and visual form.
The ambiguity to inject imagery.
How do you get such interesting shapes?

Drawing successful.
It has to end.
It has to take.
I feel that there's a lot I cannot understand.
It's confusing.
I have to have control.

Rare to See
A little market.
The inescapably sunny days.
Walk up and down the sidewalks.
Discovering night, as gentle floodlights.

The passes of the valley.
Velvet rope clip joint.
Pretty girls in miniskirts.
A dude in square-toed loafers, barfing chocolate martinis.
Unglamorous.

A menacing dwarf.
An aging pimp.
A middle-aged cowboy.
Those oddly relaxing cheap drinks.

Now?
When you see it, you see when.
The day before the storm.
You going?
You going?
I don't know.
Get some food, it was bad.
The government's never been there.
Why are you going?

Personal Decision
They were talking.
I looked at my wife.
I refused to go.
Thousands and thousands, and they weren't going.
I hear I'm very happy.

This In You
Like a death trap, there was no food.
The bathrooms and stuff.
Those people, I knew.

Here On Our Own
I want to say is.
This is.
Is that?

Been abandoned.
Looking for the people with money.
Class and privilege.
The government was never there.
We're not looking for the government.

Ain't Nothing to Feel
Naked as the truth.
Just naked, just naked.
They all got blood.
Everybody that died.
Four or five.
With all this murder, they are responsible.

Photos in Chinese
In a two-room apartment,
I gathered the looks of people.
I saw a waterbug.
A flashback to the Lower East Side.

Lunch

2008-11-03T22:10:00.000-05:00

Lunch
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.
www.ErikVP.com
(Sold)

Dinosaur is hungry and all the animals know it. What does dinosaur want for lunch today? Lizard kabob, bbq giraffe, fried anteater, or turtle soup. There is only one safe place to be and that's on top of dinosaur's head.

Many of the images in my artwork are seen within the painting and then I draw them. Newspaper collage painted black with some razor blade scratches makes this process work really well. The black paint creates a better contrast for bringing out lines in the surface.

Clean Teeth

2008-11-03T22:06:00.002-05:00

Clean Teeth
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood
www.ErikVP.com
(Available - $100)

The animals never know if dinosaur is just visiting or looking for lunch. Dinosaur went to the dentist today and got his teeth cleaned. He's showing his shiny new teeth off to all his friends, but is making everyone very nervous. He's also giving his rainmaker friend and turtle a free ride.

I was working on this painting around the same time as "Lunch", so that's why dinosaur is featured in both. There were a bunch of random scribbles in the yellow mountain area. Each scribble evolved into a lizard or snake. The Brooklyn Rail was used for all the newspaper collage.

The two green trees on top of the mountain symbolizes Ventura, California. This is explained in greater detail in an earlier painting called "One Green Lizard"

Green Eyes Likes Spam

2008-11-02T22:57:00.000-05:00

Green Eyes Likes Spam
2008 - 11"x12" - Mixed media on wood.
www.ErikVP.com
(Not For Sale)

Sam wonders if his pet green-eyed snake would like to eat something else besides rats and mice. He brings green-eyed snake a can of Spam and tells him it tastes really good fried in a pan with a bowl of rice. Green-eyed snake likes Spam in a can. It tastes like rats and mice and he doesn't even have to catch it.

Say!
I like Spam in a can.
I do. I like it Sam I am.
I would eat Spam on a bike
or have for lunch while on a hike.

I would eat Spam in the rain
or riding home on the F-train.
And in Central Park sitting in a tree.
And even while I watch TV.
Spam is so good and yummy you see!

I like Spam with a bowl of rice.
It tastes a lot like rats or mice.
I will eat Spam in a box.
And I will eat it instead of a fox.
I will eat Spam here or there.
Say! I will eat Spam ANYWHERE!

I really like my
Spam in a can.
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam I Am!

It wasn't until after the drawing was complete that I added the Dr. Seuss, "Green Eggs and Ham" influences. I was thinking of a title and first though of "Green Eyes" since that's what I notice first when looking at the drawing. Green eyes, made me think of green eggs and ham. I like to eat Spam with a bowl of rice, so then the title became "Green Eyes Likes Spam". My wife saw the painting and I told her the title. She's a preshool teacher and knows the Green Eggs and Ham story well. She asked if the train was from the story. At that point, I decided to read the story and that's when I decided to mix my drawing with the story.

A few additions were then made to the drawing. I scribbled in the can of Spam with a rat and mouse in the pink section, added the rain drops over green-eyed snake's head, and the phrase "I am Sam" by the little guy on the bike. I referenced "Green Eggs and Ham" and made a few changes. I have an earlier painting called "Snake In The Garden" is also tied into the story where Sam is wondering if his pet snake would like to eat something else besides rats & mice.

Wiggle Your Feet

2008-10-15T14:19:00.001-04:00

Wiggle Your Feet
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood
www.ErikVP.com

The two ostriches are observing the strange looking fish. They conclude that it must be a mudskipper hopping around on land. Fish tells them he is not a mudskipper. "Mudskippers have modified pectoral fins for walking on land, but I have legs and feet just like you", says fish. Yellow ostrich is skeptical and tells fish to wiggle his feet. Fish wiggles his feet.

There was a previous painting underneath this one that had some yellow. I didn't like it and started covering the painting with gesso (white primer). There was this little section of yellow in the middle that I liked so left it alone. The yellow turned into an ostrich. I drew the fish, cliff, and the second ostrich. It looked a little too plain for me, so I glued some newspaper along the top of the painting and did some random doodling on each piece.

If you look at a larger, detailed photo on my website, you will see the phrase "Wiggle your feet several times..." in the yellow newspaper section. I really liked the phrase and that inspired the short story and the title. I normally put feet on the walking fish, but the animals normally have legs & no feet. On the yellow ostrich, you can see that the feet were added in later since I used charcoal and it was a little darker that the pencil I used for the legs.

I went to Thailand years ago and saw some mudskippers (amphibious fish that hop around on land). They are one of the most fascinating creatures I have ever seen. I have a painting from earlier in 2008 called "UFO". The painting underneath UFO had a mudskipper in it, and I had mixed feelings about painting over it, but eventually did and it evolved into UFO.

An exacto knife was used to scratch up the surface, and there are a few traces of gold and red paint exposed from the previous painting. The newspaper also gets torn up a little, and I leave most of the loose pieces alone, but remove anything that's too fragile and about to come loose. You can't see this in the photo, but if you ever see my work in real life, you will see this in most paintings with newspaper.

Fire

2008-10-02T15:55:00.000-04:00

Fire
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood
Price: $300US
www.ErikVP.com

Even after doing this summary, my thoughts about the meaning of this painting remain fragmented. I can explain some of the random thoughts that inspired the painting along with the symbolisms. When I am creating a painting, I just create. It's not until after the painting is done that I try to unravel what it's about.

- On 9/11/08, I walked by a fire station near my apartment and saw a bunch of firemen returning from the ceremony at ground zero. Some of the symbolisms related to 9/11 include, the red firehouse & ladder, arabic type graffiti on the mountains, fire, red smoke in the sky, the twin towers symbolized by the two trees on top of the pink mountain, with the right one beginning to fall, the four floating pyramids symbolizing the twin towers, Pentagon & United flight#93

- The walking fish has been in a few previous paintings, although this is the first fire breathing fish. There's sort of a life & death theme since both the walking fish and the ankh can represent life, yet the fire, floating ankhs & pyramids represent death.

- The white, black, blue, and red water drops falling from the sky onto the fire-breathing fish could represent the cycle of life and death. They could also be thought of as war and conflict, or "good" vs "evil" between the United States(red/white/blue) and Middle East (black).

- I recently read, "Basquiat - A Quick Killing In Art", and remember thinking a lot about the similarities between Jean-Michel Basquiat and Jimi Hendrix including how both died early in their careers due to their loosing struggles with drugs. The fire-breathing fish is my favorite part of the painting. "Fire" is one of my favorite Hendrix songs, so that inspired the title.

Many of my paintings include the sun, but it's a little less obvious in this painting. It's the black & white sun on a stick to the right of the yellow mountain. It's more of an American indian sun god than a traditional sun.

You will notice I have both colored pencil and pastel pencil listed in the ingredients. The M&M flowers at the base of the mountains are pastel pencil. The pastel pencils are softer and have more friction between the painted wood and the pencil lead, so you get a better buildup of color. I tried using the colored pencils first, but they looked dull. The outlines of the moutains are colored pencils, and this works because it's directly on unpainted wood. The pastel pencils are delicate and smear easily. A sprayed varnish needs to be applied very lightly.

Where The Sun Don't Shine

2008-09-28T23:32:00.001-04:00

Where The Sun Don't Shine
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood
Price: $300US
www.ErikVP.com

This painting started with an inkjet print I was experimenting with. I took a bunch of photos and printed them, one at a time, on the same paper, then glued it to the wood. It quickly evolved into Manhattan with the buildings, subway lines, trees (Central Park), brown border representing an island, and the water.

I felt like it needed nails somewhere so I put about ten of them along the brown border, and then put a little paint on each. It didn't look right, and then realized they would look better around the sun.

When I am standing in the subway stations waiting for the train, I like watching the rats running around on the tracks. They are interesting to watch. The rats are running uptown/downtown on the C and F lines in the painting. The dollar signs symbolize Wall Street in lower Manhattan.

I knew the painting was of Manhattan, but didn't have a creative name for it. My wife took a look at it and came up with the name. We both really like Manhattan, so it's intended to be humorous, not negative. If you have never been to Manhattan, there are places where you don't see the sun due to the tall skyscrapers.

Snake In The Garden

2008-09-27T22:05:00.001-04:00

Snake In The Garden
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood
Not For Sale
www.ErikVP.com

My wife named the painting. I really liked the name because it fits perfectly with the generic Freud/Jung sexual symbolisms that paintings with snakes and women are assumed to be about.

Here's an alternate theory to consider. I used to have a pet red tailed boa constrictor. She only ate rats, and I wondered if she had any interest in eating something else. I experimented with a variety of foods including McDonalds french fries & M&M's but she had no interest.

The snake in the painting likes M&M's and is curious about the purple M&M. She is smelling it with her tongue. The lady is watering her M&M garden but is aware the snake likes to eat M&M's. This is symbolized by the three M&M trees etched into the snake's body right behind the head, but it's not easy to see in the photo. The M&M trees that have no color aren't ripe yet.

Squirrel Took My Bagel

2008-09-19T16:14:00.000-04:00

Squirrel Took My Bagel
2008 - 22"x17", Mixed media on wood
(SOLD)
www.ErikVP.com

Anteater is tired of eating ants and decides to buy a bagel. He goes to get something to drink and when he returns his bagel is missing. Where could it have gone? Anteater asks lizard where his bagel went. "Was it an everything bagel?", asks lizard. "Yes it was", says anteater. "Squirrel took your bagel", replies lizard. Anteater is not happy with squirrel.

The painting was inspired by a funny story my wife told me. She was at Prospect Park (Brooklyn, NY) and saw this squirrel run off with someone's bagel. It was one of those giant New York bagels...the ones that are about 6" in diameter and weigh two pounds. He carried the bagel up a tree and ate it.

When we lived in California, we visited the Santa Barbara zoo a few times. One of my favorite animals was the anteater. I think I like the unusual looking animals the most.

During the summer months in New York, there are lots of mosquitoes. My wife is always using Deet to keep them away. One day, we were feeding the ducks and this class of kids stops by the pond. The teacher points to a dragonfly and says they eat mosquitos. I wondered if tying a string to a dragonfly would keep the mosquitos away.

Painting on this piece of wood really frustrated me because I couldn't come up with anything worth keeping. It was probably my fourth attempt at a painting. However, the layers of paint and newspaper made for a great irregular surface to paint on. The razor blade scratches also look a little deeper than other paintings.

I have used the horizontal split across the top of the painting several times before. It's inspired by one of my favorite artists, Wosene and also used in Egyptian art. The black and white section has nothing to do with the lower section, yet I don't think the painting would look very good without it. It's kind of interesting how they work together.

The black are is not really a perfect black as seen in the photo. I had some trouble with glare when taking the photo, so I modified in photoshop but it ended up looking a little too perfectly black.

Rat and Moon

2008-09-11T16:53:00.000-04:00

Rat and Moon
2008 - Mixed media on wood
SOLD - Private Collection New York
www.ErikVP.com

Rat is looking at the moon wondering if it's really made of cheese. A few of the rats discovered a secret subway line that takes them to the moon. The painting is dated 4706.

There was a partial painting underneath this one (see photo on my website), and I covered it with black gesso. I scratched up the surface with an exacto knife, then drew in the animal and moon. It came together pretty quickly, and I was really tempted to add detail because it felt uncomfortably minimalistic. I resisted temptation and compromised by adding some detail outside the black area.

This painting was completed in early February during the Chinese New Year. This is the year of the rat. The animal originally had a much shorter tail, but once I realized he was a rat, the tail was extended. I have rats in some of my other paintings because I see them running around the subway tracks all the time. I like to watch the rats as I'm waiting for the train to arrive. The tracks along the right edge are marked "F" since that's the train I usually take.

Rainbow House

2008-09-06T09:32:00.000-04:00

Rainbow House
2008 - 11"x12", Mixed media on wood.
Price: $300US
www.ErikVP.com

This painting was inspired by Babe Ruth and the Yankees, but probably not obvious. I went to a Yankees game and there was an hour long thunderstorm before the game started. Eventually it cleared, and there was this amazing rainbow off in the distance. It was a great game, and yes the Yankees won.

Rainbows are preceeded by clouds and rain, then followed with sunshine. Babe Ruth was the rainbow that brought the sunshine to New York and the Yankees. He joined the Yankees in 1920, hit 54 home runs, and helped draw record crowds. The larger crowds led to building a new stadium in 1923. This is why Yankee Stadium is called "the house that Ruth built". Their first season in the new stadium also brought their first World Series title.

I started this painting around the time I was finishing up a recent painting called "Here Comes The Sun" which is why they look similar. Both paintings have bright colors, with the raw newspaper providing a black and white contrast. Sometimes I go overboard with too much bright coloring, but the black and white helps tone everything down. As with all my paintings, I use the Brooklyn Rail newspaper.

In the yellow section, to the left of the two mountains, is a little guy riding on top of an elk. This was inspired by a painting I really like from Bill Traylor called "Untitled (Man Leading Black Dog)".

I used an exacto knife to scratch up the area outside the house outline. It wasn't planned, but I liked how it created a color contrast between the house and the background and helped separate the two areas.